A mall frozen in 1978 and severely trashed. Fortunately many treasures are to be found throughout, including gaudy 70's decor, old signs, fixtures, and even merchandise!

Security Measures

fences

wooden boarding

Police station nearby.

Historical Dates

Built: 1966Closed: 1978

Required Equipment

flashlight

breathing mask

Recommended Equipment

Construction boots.

History

Harvey Illinois is a suburb of Chicago located south of the city. Between 1920 and 1960 the city flourished with industrial development, and quickly became a working-class town with many modest residences.

In 1961 it was proposed to build a large indoor shopping mall on a 60 acre site occupied by a declining golf course. By 1964 construction began on the mall which was to include 41 stores and two major anchors. The first store to open was Montgomery Wards in 1965. The next year saw the opening of the remainder of the mall including a Walgreen's, JC Penney and Jewel grocery store.

Almost simultaneously the economy of Harvey began to decline with the closure of industrial properties. This did not disuade the owners of Dixie Square from adding a third anchor store, Turnstyle Family Centre, in 1970.

As the 1970's rolled along the city of Harvey was in the midst of a huge economic upheaval. As factory workers left the city, residents from poor areas of Chicago found the relatively inexpensive houses of Harvey attractive. Unfortunately this also gave rise to the local crime rate, and Dixie Square was not immune. In 1972 and 1973 botched robberies led to two murders, while another took place as a woman was shot in her car by 4 youths while on her way to the mall. Also in 1973 a teenage girl was lured from the mall, tortured and strangled.

In 1976 a desperate attempt at luring shoppers to Dixie Square was undertaken. The mall underwent a major renovation, but this was not enough to stop the exodus of shoppers to other safer malls. At the start of 1978 only 20 tenants remained, and the entire Turnstyle chain went out of business. While other Turnstyle locations were quickly replaced with other anchors, the one at Dixie Square was not.

The next fatal blow would be the departure of JC Penney early in 1978, followed by Wards in November 1978. At this time the mall itself closed with only Walgreens and Jewel still operating with their own outside entrances. In early 1979 they left as well, the entire mall being deserted.

In July of 1979, Dixie Square finally got it's 15 minutes of fame, despite being closed. Parts of the mall were temporarily redecorated and embellished as part of the set for the Blues Brothers movie. "Fake" stores were created for the filming, including Toy's 'R Us, which never actually had a location there. The famous mall car chase scene was shot here, and it provides excellent footage of what the mall would have looked like in it's final days. After the filming was over, the mall was vacated once again, this time for good.

In the mid-80's vandals broke into the mall and destroyed every pane of glass they could find. This was the beginning of the slow decay of the vacant structure that still continues to this day. As scheme after scheme for redevelopment fell through, more and more vandals destroyed the interior of the mall. In 1989 Mike Bargerhuff photographed portions of the mall, which compared to now, seemed to be in pretty good shape. With the mall now being over 20 years old, the original roof would have begun to leak causing water damage inside, and eventually portions of the roof began to collapse, further compounding the problem.

In 2005 the Montgomery Ward store was sold to American Kitchen Delights, a manufacturer of airline food, who planned to use the building as a warehouse. Workers began to push all of the debris from the store into the mall's former main entrance, however this was stopped after asbestos was found in the debris. The rest of the property was sold to developer John Deneen, who planned to redevelop the land with new big-box retailers. The YMCA also began constructing senior housing on the southeast corner of the property near TurnStyle.

On Christmas Eve 2005, illegal demolition began on Dixie Square in the middle of the night. About 60% of Montgomery Wards, which had been purchased by American Kitchen Delights earlier in the year, was destroyed before Mayor Eric Kellogg happened to be driving by the mall and ordered work to be stopped, informing crews they had demolished the wrong building.

After days of finger pointing, it was determined that the Wards building had actually been sold to two different people; AKD, and John Deneen. Deneen eventually acquired the entire property, and in March of 2006 re-started a heavily publicized demolition by leveling the rest of the Wards building, the Central Energy Plant, and the mall's former Main Entrance. However it seems once the media left, so did demolition crews.

By this point, Deneen was out of funds to continue asbestos removal, and his waterpark project in Dolton had also stopped. Deneen would later be arrested on charges of harassing United Demolition; with loaded weapons and ski-masks claimed to have been found in his car. With Deneen still presumably behind bars, Dixie's future once again remains up in the air.

The remainder of the mall is left wide open and accessible to anyone. Even the Harvey Police with their headquarters in part of the former parking lot, didn't seem too intent on stopping trespassers. The largest threat to visitors is now the wild dogs that roam the site.

Beginning in 2005, filmmaker Paul McVay took on the enormous task of creating a documentary film on Dixie Square. In 2009, however, just about all of his work had vanished from the internet; though efforts to document the mall's final years continued through a massive internet following that came in the wake of McVay & co.'s work.

In 2008 the second floor of JCPenney began to collapse, and by 2010 about 45% of the second floor had crashed to the ground. In 2009 the scavengers returned to Dixie Square and most of the mall's remaining signage was gone by the end of the year.

After years of bureaucratic holdups, demolition finally began in early 2012, with the last girders falling in May.